The approval of next year’s legislative priorities took three rounds of voting from the Oak Harbor council.

The city’s requests to the legislature cover a wide range of topics, including child care, emergency services, flexible real-estate excise tax, indigent defense, community infrastructure, marina, growth, Highway 20 and the ferry system, ratepayer impacts and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

During two recent meetings, the city council focused on whether to ask state lawmakers to revise the state property tax cap — and ultimately removed the issue from the list of priorities.

The current cap has been in place since 2002, when an initiative reduced the amount local governments can increase property tax collection each year from 6% to 1%. The state Supreme Court threw out Tim Eyman’s I-747, but the state legislature then adopted it under public pressure.

Last December, the city council joined other municipalities across the state in requesting the legislature grant local elected officials the authority to revise the cap on property tax hikes to better account for inflation and population growth. The new cap would not exceed 3% a year.

This year, however, the idea has proved to be more controversial. The suggestion to raise the property tax cap from 1% to 3% split the council at the Nov. 5 meeting. When the motion was made to approve the priorities without the option to raise taxes, the council tied 3-3, and Mayor Ronnie Wright broke the tie by voting against it.

Two lists returned to the Tuesday meeting: one advocating for the tax cap raise and the other without.

Councilmember Bryan Stucky preferred the list where the tax cap remained at 1%.

“I understand that on paper it sounds great,” Stucky said. “If we could do say 3% in the times where it’s hard or we have a shortfall or something, we could do it that time and not another time. I get that, and it sounds good.”

Stucky feared this opened the door to an automatic 3% tax hike.

Councilmember Jim Woessner said that the Association of Washington Cities pushes for the higher property tax cap every year.

“I think the state knows darn well how AWC feels about it and how cities feel about it, and myself, if this is our priorities I’d like to keep it our true priorities, the priorities that are best going to impact our city,” he said.

Mayor Pro Tem Tara Hizon argued that showing local support would help the association push for the higher tax on the state level.

“There is strength in numbers, and that if the legislature gets a completely united front in the message that cities are sending them, I think that that has value,” she said.

The council voted 4-3 against the priority list with the higher tax cap.

The third motion called for the priority list without the tax cap, and it passed unanimously.

The approved priorities will be added to the Oak Harbor website and sent to the Association of Washington Cities and legislators.

“I am pleased that the council decided to remove advocating for an increase to the property tax cap,” Stucky wrote in an email. “While I respect the viewpoint of others who believe that allowing cities to raise the tax cap during difficult times or when additional funding seems necessary could be beneficial, I have concerns. Since the city has historically always voted to uphold the 1% tax cap each year, I worry that any increase to that amount could become more or less automatic, regardless of the actual need.”